Steven Stanley

Bio

Steven Stanley is a critical psychologist in the School of Social Sciences at Cardiff University, Wales. His academic background is in Psychology. He holds an Honours degree in Psychology (The Nottingham Trent University, 2000) and a Doctorate in Philosophy titled 'Doctoral Dilemmas: Towards a Discursive Psychology of Postgraduate Education' (Department of Social Sciences, Loughborough University, 2005). Stanley is interested in the therapeutic cultures of late modernity, with a particular focus on social studies of mindfulness. His research comprises three interwoven threads: (i) Historical scholarship of meditation and mindfulness in Buddhism and Psychology – specifically as applied to ethico-moral issues; (ii) Qualitative analyses of mindfulness-based teaching in action; (iii) Experiments in post-therapeutic contemplative practices as forms of social exploration. His articles have appeared in journals such as Theory & Psychology, Social & Personality Psychology Compass, and Qualitative Research in Psychology. Alongside his academic research, Stanley has a 20-year meditation practice, and has undertaken the two-year Committed Dharma Practitioner Programme at Gaia House, Devon, and Pāli Summer School at Oxford Centre for Buddhist Studies, Oxford. Currently, he is collaborating internationally on a series of interdisciplinary studies of mindfulness, meditation, and mind wandering. He is leading co-editor of the Handbook of Ethical Foundations of Mindfulness (Stanley, Purser & Singh, Springer Publications, due 2018). Stanley is the Principal Investigator of a three-year research project ‘Beyond Personal Well-Being’, a landmark study of the mindfulness movement in the United Kingdom, funded by The Leverhulme Trust.

Stanley, S. (2013). "Things said or done long ago are recalled and remembered": the ethics of mindfulness in early Buddhism, psychotherapy, and clinical psychology. European Journal of Psychotherapy and Counselling, 15 (2), 151-162.